Posted by
aurorawatcher on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:54:47 AM
The world we inhabit is evil and cruel, filled with suffering and despair. Some find unjust suffering a philosophical argument against the very existence of God. Many refuse to trust or believe in any god who allows history and life to proceed as it has. Philosopher J.L. Mackie postulated that a good and powerful God would not allow pointless evil, therefore, the traditional Biblical God could not exist.
Of course, since we’re speaking of logic here, I must point out that just because some kinds of suffering seem pointless to me doesn’t mean that all suffering is pointless or that all people will view it as pointless. It would be fallacious to assert that because I view something as pointless it is therefore pointless. I think carnival rides are pointless. My 9-year-old son and 45-year-old husband would disagree. Just because you can’t imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn’t mean there can’t be one. The assumption that good reasons for evil are something we can easily recognize is a faith assumption. The existence of evil is not an argument against God’s existence.
CS Lewis originally rejected the idea of God because of the cruelty of life. Then he came to realize that evil was even more problematic for the atheist. Suffering provided a better argument for God’s existence than against it. He honestly asked himself where he got the idea of “just” and “unjust”. What in the world was he using for a frame of reference in a cruel universe? Was it merely a private idea, something to do with his inner fantasies? He rejected that for an option. We are told people ought not to suffer, die, be mistreated, go hungry, but evolution requires those very inequalities in order to work. On what basis, then, does the atheist judge the natural world as horribly wrong? Without God, there is not objective standard to make such a judgment. The secular way of looking at the world provides no moral framework whatsoever. Wickedness cannot be ascribed in a natural system. The problem of evil and suffering are problems for everyone, whether we are believers or nonbelievers. Abandoning a belief in God does not somehow make the problem of evil easier to handle.
God, through Jesus, experienced the greatest depth of pain and suffering. Christianity does not claim that belief in God will avoid pain. It claims that God will provide great resources to face suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair. We see in the cross Jesus facing overwhelming pain and separation from the Godhead. It is important to remember that Jesus is God, Who chose to step down into human existence as one of us. I don’t think we humans can fully appreciate what that meant to Him. The transcendent sinless God chose to become a man and to bear the sins of His fellow human beings. In doing so, He faced the separation from God that every soul who labors under sin must face. Clearly, He accepted this suffering because He loves us. God loves us enough to die a horrible death separated from Himself on our behalf. We cannot say that He allows suffering because He does not care for us. He proved His care while on the cross when He took on our suffering for us.
Please remember, though, that Christianity teaches that the suffering of this world is a temporary condition. In heaven, there will be no pain – not even the memory of pain. The pathway to that painfree future is the incarnation and suffering of God. The doctrine of the resurrection instills Christians with a powerful hope for it promises that we will get the life we most long for and it will be so much better than anything we can even imagine!
Suffering is a pathway to peace and strength. When God finally vanquished pain and evil, it will be so utterly defeated that we will not even remember its existence. The Christian’s future life is one of infinite joy in which we will not even have the memory of suffering.